


Sweethearts' Day

by StrictlyNoFrills



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: A Valentine's Day Fic, Discussion of a minor character’s death, F/M, Female Bilbo Baggins, Fluff and Angst, Modern Day Middle Earth, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22708093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrictlyNoFrills/pseuds/StrictlyNoFrills
Summary: It's Sweethearts' Day in Middle Earth, and Fili is stuck on a date with someone he only considers a friend.And their poor waitress just can't seem to keep it together around him.Sometimes he hates being the Crown Prince.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Fíli, FemBilbo/Fili, past-Fili/OFC
Comments: 16
Kudos: 171





	Sweethearts' Day

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Fili Friday! And Happy Valentine's Day, to those of you who celebrate it!
> 
> I'll be wrapping up _Rex ex Machina_ next Fili Friday, for those of you who might be wondering.
> 
> For now, please enjoy this humble Valentine's Day offering. Love you guys! ♥
> 
> This is loosely inspired by a prompt I gave ISeeFire a few months back - and she filled it beautifully: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20204323/chapters/51481417  
> I said at the time that I might try to write my own version (and she was fine with that), but this wound up being even more different than I thought it would be, which I actually think is a good thing. Yay for variety, right?

Lilting classical piano music rolled over the dining room like a babbling brook, and all around, lovers murmured to each other in sweet, intimate tones as they leaned towards each other across their tables. Faux vines hung from replicas of trees so well-made they appeared real, all interspersed about the dining room to separate the different sections. The low lighting provided by fairy lights and a few lamps styled after large forest flowers gave everything an air of privacy, as though each couple occupied a world of their own… each couple but the one sat at the table towards the back, where the young gentleman could not help the way his attention drifted away from his date towards the other diners, guiltily wishing he were anywhere but here.

His companion continued to expound upon a recent incident from her charity organization which was probably supposed to be amusing and engaging, and the young man tried to make himself interested in what she was saying, but it was evident to anyone who cared to look that his heart was not in it.

“Fili?” she asked. “Are you alright? You seem like you’re a million miles away.”

For what felt like the hundredth time tonight, Fili whipped his head back around toward his date. “I’m so sorry, Jena. I’m just…”

She offered him a commiserating smile. “Just not really into it?”

With a grateful sigh, Fili admitted, “Yes, which is terrible of me. Forgive me?”

Jena waved him off. “There’s nothing to forgive. I knew it was a longshot when Tauriel suggested this to me last week.”

“You did?” Fili asked, blinking in a way that probably looked completely stupid.

Brushing a curly blonde lock out of her face, Jena favored him with a compassionate look he was certain his behavior tonight had not earned. “Everyone knows how upset you were when Lessa broke things off between you.”

Ah, yes. When _Lessa_ broke things off. That was the official version of how everything fell apart around this time last year, at least. The royal family’s PR team had done an excellent job of disseminating that story, as was to be expected.

No one could know that Nori had uncovered a plot between Lessa and the Haradrim to undermine Fili’s rule once Thorin was assassinated and Fili inherited the throne.

No one could know that she had been indicted for treason and convicted at trial.

No one could know how her body had struggled and swayed as she hung from the noose the royal guards had wrapped around her neck.

No one could know that he had held her body and wept after it finally stopped twitching and the guards lowered her to the ground, the box holding the engagement ring meant for her finger burning a hole in his back pocket in the same way the tears burned the skin on his cheeks and neck.

 _No one_.

“Define ‘everyone,’” Fili said, trying not to grit his teeth and staring down at the tiny silver confetti hearts which covered the wine-red tablecloth.

Jena’s blue eyes, wide and guileless, widened even further at whatever had managed to slip through his tenuous grasp on his emotions.

“Well, just – you know, I’m sure ‘everyone’ isn’t quite the right word. The people who run in the same circles as we do – our friends and peers. I didn’t mean anything by it, Fili, other than that I should have realized you weren’t ready to start dating again. Especially not on this day, of all days.”

Sweethearts’ Day was the day the PR team had circulated as the day Lessa ended their courtship.

The body double her family had agreed to pretend was Lessa and who was in truth a member of Erebor’s royal guard, her face surgically altered to look like his dead lover’s, had shown up today on the channel dedicated to Esgaroth’s celebrity gossip. She was on the arm of one of Dale’s lesser nobles.

She had been instructed to look blissfully happy, and from what Nori reported to Fili after the clip aired, she had succeeded.

Fili took a long, deep breath in and then let it out again, forcing his shoulders, which had tensed up abominably, to relax and land somewhere below his steaming ears. “Forgive me again. It seems that you are right. I wasn’t ready for this.”

He had known that, and had, in fact, told his little brother that very thing two weeks ago, when Kili got it in his head to set Fili up on a date for Sweehearts’ Day so that Fili would not stay at home, miserable and alone. It was an awful idea when Kili initially proposed it, and it was still an awful idea now. Fili reiterated to Kili that it was a bad idea – a few times – after Kili had first brought it up, but deterring his little brother from something was never so easy as that, and his intentions were good, so Fili had ultimately caved to the inevitable, and now here he was, on a disappointing date with one of the friends of Kili’s long-time girlfriend.

“Like I said before: there’s nothing to forgive.”

Their waitress, a tiny little thing with dark red curls, and ever-so-slightly pointed ears which were different from Tauriel’s and the rest of those belonging to the few elves remaining in Middle Earth, belying the young woman’s hobbit heritage, arrived at their table then, setting Jena’s Chicken Diane down smoothly and reciting the details of her order, and then turning to place Fili’s spaghetti with meatballs down and nearly dropping it in his lap. She would have succeeded, had it not been for Fili lifting his hands to steady the plate and help her guide it the rest of the way to the table.

She swallowed loudly, looking ready to bolt and flushing from her cheeks all the way down to the top of her starch white blouse – and possibly lower, though Fili firmly refused to contemplate that too closely.

“I am so sorry, Your Highness!” she whispered, sounding completely humiliated, and terrified to boot. “I swear, I’m not normally like this.”

Fili was aware. Because of his previous abstraction, he had seen the way Bilbo comported herself with the rest of the diners in her section. With everyone else, she was calm, pleasant, and perfectly confident, moving with a grace and economy that would put most dancers to shame.

He wondered if his title intimidated other people to this degree, and he was simply insulated from that fact by nature of spending most of his time around his family and other members of the nobility, and the royal guards, who had been trained to avoid exhibiting such behavior. It was challenging, to say the least, to protect targets when one could not stop tripping over one’s own feet around them.

“It’s alright. We all have our off moments,” Fili said, sending her a reassuring smile. If only she would look him in the eye, she might actually catch sight of it and realize that Fili was not nearly so terrifying as his station in life might suggest.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Yes, I suppose we do. Thank you, Your Highness. If there’s anything I can get for the two of you, please let me know.” This last part she directed towards Jena, meeting her kindly amused gaze with no indication of trouble at all.

“Another glass of wine for me, I think, Bilbo,” Jena said before glancing at Fili’s glass. It was still full. “And that should cover it. Unless there’s something else that you need, Fili?” she asked, raising her finely arched eyebrows delicately.

Fili shook his head. “No, thank you,” he replied, though he made sure to catch Bilbo’s eye. “I’m fine.”

Bilbo flushed scarlet again when he met her gaze and sketched a slightly shaky curtsy. “Then if you’ll excuse me.”

She scuttled away with her head angled towards the floor, and Fili stared after her, feeling defeated.

None of the noblewomen – none save Lessa, the thought of whom shot a lance of pain through his chest, as it probably always would – had ever captured his heart, and women outside the nobility were frightened by his status as Erebor’s Crown Prince. How was he ever supposed to find someone to settle down with in the face of such obstacles?

“Poor thing. She seems positively smitten,” Jena said, startling Fili out of his observation.

“Excuse me?”

“Bilbo? I’ve known her for a few years now, and I’ve never seen her like that with anyone.”

Fili scoffed. “She can’t possibly be interested in me. It’s just my title.”

“I promise you, it’s not. Kili and Tauriel have come here with me before. It’s one of the reasons I suggested that we come here. Kili seemed convinced that you’d like it.” She waved her hand as though physically pushing that tangent away. “Anyway, I’ve asked to sit in Bilbo’s section every time I’ve come since my first time dining here, and she’s never had a problem around Kili. She also does volunteer work for my charity when she isn’t working here or going to classes at Esgaroth U.”

“So, when you say that you know her…”

Jena leaned forward and smiled at him earnestly, “I mean, I really know her. And based on everything I’ve seen tonight, I would say she’s got quite the crush on you, _Your Highness_.”

He and Jena may never have been close, but they got along well enough to rescue each other from people they disliked for one reason or another at social functions. She knew him well enough to know that Fili hated it when people called him that, especially when she said it in such a gently ribbing tone, and he imagined that was exactly why she’d done so.

“And judging by the way you can’t seem to keep your eyes off of her, I would say that the feeling is at least somewhat mutual. Perhaps tonight won’t be such a total loss for you, after all.”

Guilty as charged, Fili dragged his eyes away from where they had begun tracking Bilbo of their own accord as soon as they registered that she was walking by on her way to pour more wine for patrons at a nearby table. “I wouldn’t call this night a loss at all, regardless of the way I may or may not feel about our waitress. I’m here, spending time with a friend and having a good meal.”

Jena rolled her eyes at him good-naturedly. “Mhmm. I’d be flattered if I didn’t know you hardly heard a word I said tonight before Bilbo became our main topic of discussion.”

The sound of glass hitting the floor and breaking brought their attention to Bilbo, who stood staring down in horror at the shards and fragments of a bottle of red wine, the contents of which were now seeping into the cream-colored carpet.

Her lips trembled and then she knelt down and began trying to pick up the bits of glass with shaking fingers.

Worried that she would injure herself trying to clean the mess up in such a state, Fili shot Jena an apologetic glance which she dismissed with a brief shake of her head, and then he got up from his seat and moved the few steps towards their distraught waitress. He took out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and knelt down beside her, reaching out for her hand.

“Here, allow me,” he said, wanting her to pass the pieces of glass she already held over to him.

“Oh, no, Your Highness, you shouldn’t-“

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” he asked gently.

She nodded jerkily and passed the glass shards over.

“I’ll pick up what I can. Why don’t you go grab a vacuum for the rest?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll get that right away, Your Highness.”

“Good,” he said, watching her as she rose on slightly wobbly legs to put her words into action. “And Bilbo?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Call me Fili.”

She squeaked. It was unfairly adorable. “Yes, Your – ahem. Yes, Fili.”

He watched her walk away for as long as he could without feeling indecent and then he returned his attention to the unfortunate wine bottle. He hoped the owners of The Enchanted Forest engaged a good steam-cleaning service. It would be difficult to maintain such a pristine carpet without one, he imagined.

A few minutes later, Bilbo returned with a small hand-held vacuum cleaner and a trashcan for the rest of the glass, which Fili deposited readily. He had a fondness for sharp objects, but he typically preferred for the edges to be a bit cleaner and easier to see.

She knelt down for the second time and used the little vacuum to suck up the smaller pieces of the wine bottle and eyed the deep Bordeaux stain with a deeply miserable air.

Fili clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t look so despondent. This sort of thing happens to the best of us.”

“Yes, but ‘the best of us’ aren’t dependent upon this job until coming into ‘our’ inheritance,” Bilbo replied, her voice glum.

She still couldn’t quite manage to look at him. Fili took her chin in his hand, using the slightest bit of pressure to tilt her head up and encourage her to look him in the eye.

“If it would make you feel better, I would be happy to say something to the owners of this place. You’ll not lose your job over this.”

“Your – Fili –“ She sighed and started over, finally dragging her eyes up to meet his own. “That’s very kind of you, but you don’t have to do that for me. You don’t even know me.”

He had to bite back a gasp. Having not seen them straight on until now, Fili had not known how beautiful her eyes were. They were big and azure blue, with little flecks of light green interspersed rather like a fairy ring around her pupils. From a distance, Bilbo was lovely, but up close like this, when he could see her gorgeous eyes and faintly flushed cheeks clearly, she was exquisite.

“I’d like to change that, if you’d allow it.” Belatedly, he remembered to let go of her chin, and wondered at the strange sense of loss afterwards.

“You would? But – why?”

Why? Because for the first time in almost a year, Fili felt something other than a vague, reluctant suspicion when speaking with a woman he had not known for most of his life. Since there was no way he could tell her that for a good, long while, he settled for saying, “Because you seem like a good person, and Jena likes you, and she’s always been a good judge of character.”

Bilbo glanced down before looking up at him again. “So, you and Jena are, ah, well. You’re together, now?”

“No. We’re just friends.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good. I mean, you know, Jena’s a good friend to have.”

Fili did not even try to resist the smile that tugged at the corners of his lips. Perhaps Jena was right.

Mahal, Fili actually hoped Jena _was_ right, and wasn’t that a miracle?

“Yes, she is. But come on. Why don’t we get up off of this floor? Not that it isn’t comfortable, but I’d imagine our knees will grow tired of even this carpet if we stay down here long enough.”

He rose and then offered Bilbo his hand, which she took slowly, small, soft fingers brushing over his like satin, her grip gentle and warm. Pulling her up, he caught her when the heel of one of her pumps snagged slightly on the carpet, and she stared up at him with her wide, trusting eyes, and Fili felt his heart beating harder in his chest than it had since the early days of his courtship with L- with _her_.

“Careful. I think one accident a night is probably the limit.”

“Oh? Is that a law around here?” she asked, a flash of humor in her eyes for the first time tonight.

He grinned down at her, not even caring at this point if he gave himself away. It felt far too good to feel _alive_ again. “I’m sure I could persuade my uncle to pass such a law, if you feel it’s necessary.”

She huffed a little laugh, tiny puffs of air escaping from her nose as she bent her head and swayed towards him a little bit more in her moment of levity. “I’m sure your uncle has far more important things to do.”

“I don’t know. Saving beautiful young women from broken ankles sounds like an important matter of state to me.”

Her head snapped up. “What did you say?”

Fili tsked lightly. “I thought people with hobbit ancestry were supposed to have sharper hearing than most.”

At her exasperated look, Fili relented, reaching up to tuck a loose lock behind one of her sweetly pointed ears. She shuddered, and he worried briefly that she might be cold. Some of the wine had splattered her slacks, after all. Then he saw the gradually deepening flush to her cheeks, traveling its way down her neck, and he began to suspect that she wasn’t cold at all. Perhaps even a little overheated.

“Please forgive me,” Fili said. “I swear I’m not normally this forward.”

She shrugged slightly, though she did extricate herself from the circle of his arms. “That’s alright.” At his doubtful look, she added, “Really. It’s fine. It’s this day. It gets to people. Makes them do things they normally wouldn’t.”

“Not a fan of Sweethearts’ Day?” Fili guessed.

“Well, I don’t hate it. It can be rather sweet, I suppose, if you have someone to share it with. But then at the same time, I believe people should love the ones they’re with every day of the year and not just one, you know?”

“Aye, I do.”

Bilbo glanced around, beginning to look self-conscious. “Anyway, I should get back to work. Thank you for your help, and please let Jena know that I’ll be by shortly with another bottle of wine.”

“Of course. And I meant what I said earlier. If you need me to say something to the owners, just let me know.”

“Thank you,” Bilbo said again before retrieving the vacuum cleaner and the trashcan and walking away, glancing over her shoulder every few steps, which Fili only knew because he kept glancing her way, even after returning to his seat.

“Well,” Jena started, sounding infinitely pleased with herself, “I do believe your night just improved immensely. Please tell me you’re going to give Bilbo your number before we leave, because if you don’t, I’ll just do it for you.”

“Jena!” Fili laughed.

“What? This is the happiest I’ve seen you in ages. You can’t possibly think I’m going to allow you to just let this opportunity slip through your fingers. Based on what I saw on TV earlier today, Lessa has more than moved on, and you deserve the chance to do that, too.”

He shoved away the cold feeling at the reminder of his ex-girlfriend and smiled at Jena warmly. “Thank you. You know you do, too, right? Someday, you’re going to meet a man who actually comes close to being worthy of you.”

“Thank you,” Jena said, sounding touched. “That means a lot, coming from you.” She picked up her fork. “Now, come on. I promised you a fantastic meal, and I for one intend to enjoy mine, even if it has gone a little bit cold.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

As he picked up his own fork, Fili resolved to give Bilbo his number before Jena felt the need to make good on her promise – or was it a warning? Either way, he wanted to leave Bilbo under no illusions that it was his own idea.

A few moments later, Bilbo returned to their table with Jena’s wine, and she offered Fili a relieved grin when she refilled Jena’s glass with no further incidents.

Fili’s heart jumped in his chest. Meeting Bilbo couldn’t erase what had happened in his past, but he had a strong feeling she was going to be vital to his future.

Perhaps Kili had been right to get Fili out of the house tonight after all.

Not that he was ever going to share that with his little brother. He’d never hear the end of it if he did.

When he placed the tip for his and Jena’s meal in Bilbo’s booklet, he made certain that the slip of paper bearing his number was clearly visible.


End file.
